


venti caramel frappuccino with a shot of vanilla

by clairelutra (exosolarmoon), sharpshooting



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Fluff without Plot, M/M, Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 13:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14021607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exosolarmoon/pseuds/clairelutra, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharpshooting/pseuds/sharpshooting
Summary: The requisite coffee shop AU, sheith-style.





	venti caramel frappuccino with a shot of vanilla

**Author's Note:**

> confession: i've been inside a starbucks exactly once, and i ordered a hot chocolate because i hate coffee.
> 
> s/o to [ruxi](https://twitter.com/OrangeRux) for the happy-face idea, and to [takethembystorm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/takethembystorm/pseuds/takethembystorm) for letting me know how cold a frappuccino was. ♥♥♥

“Lance… this is a _little too much_ for just going to a Starbucks.”

“No, no, no,” Lance insisted, rummaging through Keith’s dresser. “Just stay with me for a sec—do you _seriously_ not have a decent flannel in here.”

“Lance…” Keith inhaled, sighed, then had to ask, “What’s a flannel?”

His innocent question received a rather predictable response; Lance froze, then turned to face Keith, stricken. “Keith. _Keith_. Buddy. _Don’t do this to me_.”

“…Okay,” Keith said slowly, holding his hands up in surrender. “I won’t.”

Lance made a disgusted little _tch_ noise in the back of his throat, and gave up on Keith’s dresser. Making sure the rest of the outfit he’d picked out for Keith was still on the bed (tight jeans and black boots and a white V-neck shirt), he rolled to his feet in one smooth motion. 

“I’ll be right back,” he said, distractedly patting Keith’s shoulder as he pushed past. “I think I have one that’ll fit you.”

He probably did, given that he and Keith were about one size apart, but still… 

“It’s just a coffee shop,” Keith called over his shoulder in Lance’s general direction—but Lance was already gone.

“You’ll understand when we get there!” came Lance’s voice, muffled by about three walls.

Keith rubbed his forehead and slumped back against the doorjam, resigned to getting dressed like a Ken doll for the sake of a single caramel frappuccino.

The things he did for ~~friendship~~ caffeine.

* * *

As irritating as the smug look on Lance’s face was, Keith _did_ understand when they got there.

The guy serving the counter was… something else.

The kind of ‘something else’ that had Keith’s pulse skating in his mouth, his stomach twisting into weird little knots at the thought of doing something as simple as telling the man his drink order.

“Told you so,” Lance hissed in his ear as they got in line, his elbow resting on the shoulder of Keith’s borrowed flannel. “Name’s Shiro, he just started last week.”

“Lance, I _swear_ if you’re trying to set me up, I’m not—” _interested._

His words were eaten by Lance’s energy-vortex. 

“You said it, not me!” Lance chirped, pushing off Keith’s shoulder and bouncing sideways at Keith’s unsettled half-glare. “Oh hey, there’s Allura!” 

_“Lance.”_

“Say ‘hi’ to Shiro for me!”

And then Lance was gone.

Which Keith would _normally_ take as a small blessing (he loved Lance but _god_ all that energy got exhausting), but now that just left him and his _awful_ conversational skills to try to spit his order at the barista.

He wasn’t even _bad_ at ordering food (god knew it’d taken him a while, but he’d gotten there), just…

The guy looked like he could pick Keith up like a kitten without breaking a sweat, and that was… well. 

Something. 

It was something.

Just… _something_.

If Lance wasn’t busy being an _utter dick_ (and Keith thought that at his friend as loudly as he could, despite Lance’s long-documented lack of telepathic ability), then Lance would probably be next to him, pulling this… _Shiro_ (if that was even his name, who even knew with Lance) into a conversation that would disguise Keith’s utterly humiliating people skills, and Shiro might _not_ leave the interaction with the (correct) assumption that Keith was a hopeless loser.

As it was, Keith was probably destined to bite his tongue in the middle of _venti caramel frappuccino with a shot of vanilla_.

It had happened before.

…More than once.

(Keith had never been good at talking to people he found attractive. _Ever_.)

By the time he got to the register, Keith already felt prickly and itchy and antsy in his skin, his mouth pinching into a frown that clung to his face as he looked up.

Shiro—and Lance was right, it was ‘Shiro’ on his nametag—gave Keith a bemused little smile and said, “Welcome to Starbucks. May I take your order?”

He was kind of _worse_ up close, because now Keith could see the strong line of his jaw and hear the smooth grind of his voice over the rabble, could meet his kind eyes and see the way his cheek dimpled at the crook of his mouth.

Keith shoved his hands into his pockets and managed a(n unnecessarily short), “Venti caramel frappu-th-shino—”

He’d bitten his tongue.

He’d bitten his _goddamn tongue_.

Keith wanted to _die_.

It was even worse because up this close, he couldn’t actually avoid Shiro’s gaze without it being obvious, so the only thing left for him to do was look Shiro in the (soft grey, sympathetically amused) eye and spit out, “Venti caramel frappuccino with a shot of vanilla.”

“Will that be all for you today?”

Shiro wasn’t _quite_ laughing, but Keith almost wished he would; it would be less… less…

Just less. Less _everything_.

“Yeah.” 

(If Lance wanted a drink, he’d have to get it for himself. Like hell was Keith going to do _anything_ for him when he’d left Keith to this horror.)

“That’ll be $5.36. What’s your name?”

The urge to give him a fake and run for the hills was _intense_. “Keith.”

Shiro worked his broad shoulders, and belatedly, Keith realized he was working with a prosthetic—the cup in Shiro was swiping his name onto was held in the grasp of a strap-powered appendage that met the stump of a thickly-muscled bicep.

Surprise knocked the frown off Keith’s face, only for Shiro’s kind smile to twist his stomach and put the scowl right back up again. 

“Your drink will be coming right up.”

Keith accepted his receipt and fled.

* * *

He couldn’t flee _far_ , of course—he’d rather lick his wounds than face Lance and Allura after this particular humiliation—but he managed to find a relatively protected nook behind the serving bar, and planted himself there to avoid further incident.

It was almost a relief to walk up to the counter, though Keith was still fighting not to high-tail it out of there. The drink was chilly, the condensation beginning to gather on its side left his palm damp, and Keith was just about to split with his hard-won prize when the top of the drink caught his notice, made him do a double take.

There was a misshapen happy face drawn in caramel on top of the whipped cream mound.

Keith studied the pattern, wondering if it could be a coincidence, then looked up for an explanation when it didn’t seem to be.

Shiro was bent over the espresso maker, looking oddly sheepish. It took about five seconds of Keith’s baffled, unblinking stare for Shiro to finally look down, and when he did, his kind smile had taken on a shy quality that had Keith’s heart damn near flipping in his ribcage.

“I… ah…” said Shiro, and swiped his wrist across his forehead, glancing away. “You looked like you were having a bad day. Sorry it’s… kind of terrible.”

Keith looked back down at his drink.

It _was_ a pretty terrible happy face.

He’d found happy faces condescending and infuriating all his life, but this one… Keith had never _once_ found a smiley quite so heartwarmingly _adorable_.

“It’s good,” he found himself saying, his cheeks hot and his face aching strangely. “It’s great. Thank you.”

When he raised his head again, Shiro looked… surprised? Pleased?

“‘Course,” Shiro said, then tilted his head slightly to give Keith the warmest smile he’d ever held witness to, and Keith’s pulse promptly skyrocketed. “Come back anytime.”

“Y-yeah,” Keith stammered, stumbling backwards over his own damn boots, then turned on his heel. “Later.”

With that, he made a quiet exit from the Starbucks, skirting around the counter to slip out of the side door and avoid Lance and Allura’s table as thoroughly as he could.

Lance was going to be _unbearably_ smug the second he found out, so the only thing Keith could do was deprive him of the information.

Because, frankly, fuck Lance.

…Even if he had been right.


End file.
